Wilson and Dawkins War over Altruistic Genes

Altruism, the sacrifice of self for others, is the cornerstone of society, human and nonhuman alike. Traditional Darwinism couldn’t explain it. However, “kin selection” as first proposed in 1955 by biologist JBS Haldane, and so beautifully expressed in Richard Dawkin's 1976 book The Selfish Gene does. Edward O. Wilson, a founder of sociobiology and world authority on those most social of creatures, ants, used to subscribe to kin selection. However, Professor Wilson is preparing a new book, The Superorganism, that challenges this idea.

Kin selection is a fairly easy idea to grasp. Organism A will reduce its own chances of survival so that Organism B, a close relative, has a better chance of survival. Because A shares a great many genes with B, it may actually be more advantageous for A to do this than pursue its own maximum survival potential. In the extreme, worker ants will sacrifice their own sterile bodies to benefit the queen and the drones who can reproduce.

Professor Wilson said in an interview with New Scientist magazine, “If you look at the literature of the theory, there are a lot of impressive-looking mathematical models but they scarcely ever come up with a real measure of anything that can be applied to nature.” He is proposing the revival of the idea of group selection, a long discounted idea.

Group selection says that evolution is working on the group rather than the individual. That is to say that groups where the individuals are more altruistic are more like to flourish than those where they do not. Recent work by David Sloan Wilson and Elliot Sober suggest a multilevel selection theory; since groups that cooperate more may out-produce others, they may be more successful.

Professor Dawkins doesn’t buy it. Wilson’s “’group selection’ terminology is misleading, and his distinction between ‘kin selection’ and ‘individual direct selection’ is empty. All we need ask of a purportedly adaptive trait is, 'what makes a gene for that trait increase in frequency?' Wilson wrongly implies that explanations should resort to kin selection only when 'direct' selection fails.”

This promises to be even more interesting than Professor Dawkins’ recent arguments against religion.

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